[jsfg_cinti] In the Great Job Desert, Some Hidden Oases

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In the Great Job Desert, Some Hidden Oases

The news on the job front has not been good. But that
doesn't mean jobs are impossible to find; you just have to
know where to look.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/business/yourmoney/04JOBS.html?todaysheadl
ines 

November 4, 2001

In the Great Job Desert, Some Hidden Oases

By BARBARA WHITAKER

he news on the job front has not been good. Employers have cut hundreds of
thousands of positions this year in response to the weakening economy,
especially after Sept. 11, and there are more reports of corporate
retrenchment almost every day. The unemployment rate has risen to 5.4
percent, near a five-year high, and is poised to grow.

But that does not mean jobs are impossible to find; you just have to know
where to look. Several industries seem immune to the current economic
downturn, including health care and pharmaceuticals, education, mortgage
banking and security. Many employers in those sectors are regularly adding
to their work force, economists say.

Novartis (news/quote) Pharmaceuticals, which hired only about 100 people
during all of 1998, is now hiring, on average, that many people each month,
said Daniel S. Bortfeld, the director of staffing. Northrop Grumman
Information Technology has 800 vacancies for a variety of positions, said
Jeffrey S. Shuman, vice president for human resources and administration.
And Countrywide Home Loans says it has more than 2,100 openings, from
entry-level jobs in call centers to computer programmers and managers.

"Anytime we hear about a group laying off, we try to make contact with that
company's human resources department," said Leora Goren, managing director
for human resources at Countrywide.

Of course, the rate of job growth has been slowing for some time. And
figures released last week show that the job gains have turned into actual
declines. About 378,000 jobs were lost in the 12 months ended in October,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In contrast, about 2.3 million
jobs were created in the previous 12 months.

College students are also feeling the effects of the slowdown. Companies and
organizations say they still plan to recruit on campuses, but less than they
did a year ago. Over all, employers say they expect to hire about 20 percent
fewer new graduates in the 2001-02 school year than in the previous one,
according to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and
Employers. One exception is government and nonprofit organizations, which
expect to increase their recruiting by 21 percent, the survey said.

Many recent layoffs have been concentrated in manufacturing and temporary
services ? about 1.6 million jobs were lost in the 12 months ending in
October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But other industries
have also been shedding workers, especially after the terrorist attacks on
Sept. 11. The airlines alone have announced plans to eliminate more than
100,000 jobs.

"We're at a cyclical turning point right now," said Stephen S. Roach, chief
economist at Morgan Stanley. He predicted that the unemployment rate was
"headed for 6 or 7 percent by the time this business cycle runs its course."

But economists say cyclical and other factors may work in some companies'
favor. Low interest rates, for example, have created a surge in business for
mortgage bankers. And the job picture for security- related companies and
military contractors, of course, has also improved. Even before Sept. 11,
however, security companies were planning to increase their budgets by 5
percent, on average, with much of the new money expected to go toward
payrolls, according to Security, a trade magazine. The magazine recently
polled corporate and government executives and found that nearly one-quarter
of them expected to hire more security workers in the next year.

For the long term, economists say technological changes and global expansion
will play important roles in job creation. Another big factor, they say, is
demographics, specifically the aging of the baby boomers.

"The reality is we have an aging population," said Joel L. Naroff, president
of Naroff Economic Advisors, a consulting firm based near Philadelphia that
focuses on the economy's impact on business planning. "And there's no
question, as long as you can see out into the future, health care of every
form," whether pharmaceuticals, medical services, clinics or laser eye
surgery, "is only at the very beginnings of its boom."

Excluding government-run hospitals, the health care industry generated
282,000 jobs in the 12 months ended in October, including 14,000 since
September. Beyond health care, 446,000 government jobs ? many in education ?
were added, followed by 142,000 in social services, 67,000 in computer and
data processing and 61,000 in finance, insurance and real estate.

Still, there is a lot more competition for those jobs. HotJobs, for example,
has had a sharp increase in visits to its Web site, www.hotjobs.com ? the
number almost tripled from June to August.

John A. Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an
outplacement firm based in Chicago, says his company's pool of candidates
has increased nearly 40 percent in the last year. But he added that about 85
percent of its clients eventually received better or equivalent jobs. The
hiring process, though, is taking longer. "You can't walk out the door and
find a job in a couple of weeks," like the frenzy of the summer or fall of
2000, Mr. Challenger said. "That period is gone."

Dimitri J. Boylan, president and chief executive of HotJobs, agreed. "The
truth is that there are many people who got laid off over the last six to
nine months who haven't gotten new jobs," he said.

And many companies, no longer desperate to fill vacancies, may be refraining
from dangling huge salaries in front of candidates.

Ms. Goren of Countrywide, which is based in Calabasas, Calif., said that
fewer candidates were making big financial demands. "People are starting to
come back to reality," she said.

An exception may be job seekers with special skills in a growth area. "There
is still a talent war going on for critical information technology skills,"
said Mr. Shuman at Northrop Grumman Information Technology, based in
Herndon, Va.

But even in such a specialized field, there is plenty of competition; Mr.
Shuman said his company receives about 18,000 résumés a month, many of them
from people seeking information technology jobs. Most of the jobs are filled
within 45 days, many with former dot-com workers, he said.

Other openings at the company are in engineering, software development,
project management and technical writing, he said. The company also receives
a high percentage of its work from military contracts, and it expects an
increase in such business in coming months.

Typical of the companies that are hiring is Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the
American division of Novartis A.G. It went through a few years of what it
called "right-sizing" before switching into hiring mode recently. While some
of the jobs are technical, requiring special skills, Mr. Bortfeld said,
others are more general ? in customer service, human resources, finance and
engineering. "The lower-level positions get filled pretty quickly," he said.
"With the higher-level, unique-skills positions, it is not an easy market
out there."

 
The tighter job market also means that job seekers need to promote
themselves aggressively, said Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director at
RHI Consulting, an outplacement firm specializing in technology. "What we're
finding right now is that the person who gets the job is the person who can
very eloquently communicate the quantifiable benefits they have to offer
that organization," Ms. Lee said.

James E. Boone, president for the Americas at Korn/Ferry International, an
executive recruiting firm, agreed. "I think the key is flexibility and a
transference of skills," he said.

David Fowler, 35, a computer programmer from Manhattan, said he was finding
success with that formula after being laid off, with 50 other people, at
Scholastic Inc. in May. He began working as a technology consultant before
accepting a position in August as a business analyst at the Sugar Foods
Corporation, a sugar supplement maker. But he quit the job, which pays
$100,000 a year, after two weeks. "I found I was being boxed into a position
I didn't like," he said.

But Mr. Fowler also said he knew that he could build on his skills to find a
position more to his liking. As he looks for another full-time job, he is
working as a consultant again and is teaching a computer language course at
New York University.

"I see today's job market with potential," he said. "The whole layoff thing
has allowed me to reinvent myself." 


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